BlingBlog

Oklahoma Disaster Relief

May 21, 2013 in General by Kevin Ely with 0 Comments

By now you’ve probably heard about the tornado that ripped through Moore, Oklahoma. Our hearts are aching for our community and we appreciate all the love and support we’ve gotten from all of you in the last 24 hours. We will probably not be posting much this week to focus on helping with our church’s response.

LifeChurch.tv is working with our partner Convoy of Hope and other local partners to offer relief to Oklahoma families. You can participate by giving to our Relief & Restoration fund. Give online at www.lifechurch.tv/relief or use your smartphone to text RELIEF and the amount of your offering to 86613. Funds received during this time of relief will go to support Convoy of Hope and other local organizations on the ground that have been vetted by LifeChurch.tv as effective and responsible organizations.

And of course, continue to pray.

Humble Heart

May 22, 2013 in General by Daniel Long with 0 Comments

I’m striving for a humble heart. From reading God’s word, I’ve learned that I do not have to be “passive” in order to be humble, but rather that a humble heart is born out of an understanding that who I am and what I do does not reflect my deeds and intellect, but instead reflects God. I’ve also learned that God created me unique, with great flaws and strengths and desires; but I can always gain insight from the strengths and desires of the people around me. It is an understanding that everything I have is from Him, and that it is my sworn duty to do what I can to exercise my talents and leverage my influence for His glory.

In my human attempts to grow a humble heart, I’ve come to realize that it is not a skill to be learned and then mastered, but rather an outgrowth of Christ which comes only from intimately knowing Him and the desires of His heart for me. By following Christ and examining His life, the blossoms in the garden of His heart will grow in the nascent and weedy garden of mine.

I’ve been greatly humbled in my three months working at LifeChurch.tv, where the humility is palpable and inspiring. I’ve been continually blown away by what I recognize to be genuinely humble-hearted individuals from whom I have a mountain of insights to learn. Being here both refreshes and challenges me in my quest and deep desire to honor God with my whole heart.

I’ve been reflecting on two illuminating testaments to how a humble heart manifests itself in the wild and not just in theory. One from a modern book and another from an ancient one:

“Every man I meet is my superior in some way. Of this, I learn of him.”

– How to Win Friends and Influence People (author Dale Carnegie quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this in mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

– Philippians 2:3-7

This Is New

May 20, 2013 in Interactive by Zachary Foster with 0 Comments

I’m a problem solver by nature. You ask me to fix something and my heart soars. My girls come to me when their simple gold chains are all twisted and mangled and I can not walk away till it’s a free flowing arc again.

But the problem is that if the same problem is solved with the same solution time and time again, I tend to lose interest and nothing looks as fresh any more. Because of that, I’m a big fan of smart solutions. I love it when people think out of the box. See things in a new light. Tackle the problem from a new angle.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a branding example that uses negative space to make their mark stand out as something different in a crowded market space

Or a different take on an iconic movie’s poster

neg-Olly

These things stand out because they take a different approach on what has been done before. Below are two great examples that do that. The first is from Elevation Church. This video came out a few years ago and for me it’s one of the best church videos I’ve ever seen because it educates and helps people understand elements of their faith and the human brain. Our faith is real, but we’re still human. Does a great job walking you through it all.

The second is a short film that is based upon a commencement speech that David Foster Wallace gave back in 2005. What I love is that it’s something new. Something that tells a story based upon a speech.

What are you doing that you need to stop and think: is there a new way to do this? Can I just take a different path from everyone else and end up somewhere beautiful?

Warning: May Cause Dizziness

May 16, 2013 in Strategies by Shawna Naylor with 2 Comments

Before I ever enter projects in to Basecamp, the project management system we use at LC, I start with a couple of different planning documents. If you know anything about me, you know Excel is one of my love languages. I use Excel to map out the full production schedule, basically grab everything from my brain and put it in one easy-to-read spreadsheet. Ok, so maybe easy for ME to read spreadsheet. Some on our team say my spreadsheets make them sick, literally dizziness, vomiting, and a call in to their boss for a sick day. But seriously, these two documents keep me on track.

I begin with the document below: the Creative Media Production Schedule.

This is an overview of curriculum for every age group. This helps me plan things like the number of weeks in each series, campus air dates, shipping around holidays, and even things like live-speak weeks. We have several sets of curriculum that are complete–meaning the creative media team does not have to “create” anything for it, but we still need to alert campuses when to use it each year and let our distribution team know when to purchase the materials and ship them. All of these details start from this production schedule document.

The next document I use which is equally important is the Rotations Schedule.

This shows each filmmaker and producer and which project they will work on each month. We work on a rotating production schedule which allows filmmakers and producers to work on different curriculum projects each month. They might work on something for 5th graders one month, small group curriculum the next month, followed by youth curriculum. This document allows me to list all upcoming projects and quickly see what each person is working on in any given month. It also allows me to quickly adjust who is on a certain project and even give options to our creative director if there is a need to switch the order of production or even switch filmmakers around as well.
With these two documents in place I can add projects to Basecamp in a timely manner. I will discuss my Basecamp process in a future post.

I know this type of view is not for everyone. It is what works for me to keep ahead of the game. I can alert our team when something is on the horizon and we need to begin to think about how we will make a certain project come to life.

What works for your team? How do stay ahead of the game? How far in advance do you plan?

User Interface Design

May 15, 2013 in Interactive by Scott Lesser with 3 Comments

Wikipedia defines a User Interface (UI) as:

… the system by which people (users) interact with a machine.

If you have a smart phone, you are interacting with different UIs constantly. Some of them are great, and some of them are awful. Here is an example of both: